BTW, did you know they have a desktop app as well? I haven't tried it yet, because the web UI is really good. You can do almost everything you can on mobile (unlike Instagram). You couldn't comment on videos before, now you can.

As much as everyone praises the "mobile-first" approach, it is undeniable that desktop/laptop traffic is still an enormous portion of the traffic on the Internet. TikTok is realizing that.

Here's something they just added that is really interesting. Scheduling. You can now, it seems upload videos and schedule them for future release.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

This is Awesome!

This is a game-changer and it shows the leadership or trailblazing actions that TikTok is taking to gain more and more market share.

While Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and other networks are getting pummeled by TikTok magnetism and worried about how to keep up, TikTok is here doing its thing, listening to what people want.

We've all been wanting scheduling features in Facebook, and Instagram, and even Twitter, but they won't do them it. I admit, some of Facebook has scheduling features now, kinda.

For the most part, FB, and IG and Twitter allow other companies like Hootsuite, or Later, to do the heavy lifting and then just control the access to the data and infrastructure. Whatever. That's their way. It sucks IMO, but it is what it is.

TikTok on the other hand, pretty much just says f*ck that! Here, we added scheduling. Go nuts, done and done!

Schedule Posts on TikTok

Here's what scheduling on TikTok looks like on a regular web browser:

After you accept a disclaimer saying that the videos have to be uploaded to their servers first, then you can just pick a date and time for the video to publish. Just as you'd want on your Facebook post for example.

Many people I have told about TikTok say "I don't have time" or I can't post to another network.

I can understand that sentiment and it's a legitimate response, but now that you can schedule posts on TikTok, does this change things for you? If you aren't using it already, does this make a difference for you to start using TikTok?

By the way, if you want, you can follow me over there as @notagrouch.

The post TikTok Adds Scheduling Future Posts Feature. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It seems that Alexandria gave her boyfriend access to her work calendar, and this caused a cacophony of complaints and accusations and more drama. As if we didn't have enough. But something caught my attention in AOC's tweet response.

First, let me just give you just one bit of context. I don't care about who is right, or whether she's allowed to do that or not. That's not the point of this post. So let's have a look.

The person that seems to have raised attention to the fact that AOC had given access to her boyfriend was actually calling AOC out for getting her boyfriend to work for her. But she responded that he was listed there because she shared her calendar, and played it off as if doing this was normal for congresspersons.

While you were having a nice Valentine's Day, @AOC decided to put her boyfriend on staff - drawing a salary on the taxpayer's dime. Nice to see her adapting to the swamp so quickly. pic.twitter.com/bvncwzxY53

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) February 15, 2019

Here is her tweet in response and I highlighted the part that caught my attention.

She's using G Suite, previously known as Google Apps. And in fact, it's not only AOC using G Suite because that wouldn't really work in this case. I can only assume that her entire office is using it. And my optimistic logic mind tells me that if she's using it, then the whole of Congress is using G Suite; it would just make sense and would be the most efficient way.

I mean, they must be, right? If she got in trouble for sharing her calendar access with her boyfriend/partner who doesn't work with her and her response was that "Congressional spouses get Gcal access all the time."

That can only mean one thing, don't you agree? That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sharing her Google Calendar.

Maybe even the Federal government is using G Suite. I don't know for sure and I haven't looked into it, but if they are, that's good!

Good because that means that they hopefully are saving money and should have really good security in place. G Suite does security really well, and running a G Suite email system is much more cost-effective than a comparable system running on Microsoft, or Linux based platforms.

So why does this matter to you?

Well, because you too could be using G Suite for your business, saving money and increasing efficiency, security and reliability. Even though Google has products for Government, and Enterprise level operations, their bread and butter is G Suite for small businesses.

But, Oscar! The email address in the tweet is not a "Gmail" address!? 

Well, Google can host email for any domain that you want. So the difference is that Gmail is free, and you always get an email address ending with @gmail.com, but with G Suite, you can use any domain. Well, any domain that you own or control.

Ever since I started using G Suite when I still had a 9-5 job, I've been recommending it to everybody. I have been using it since it was called Google Apps, I think I've been using it for over 10 years now.

Sharing files with colleagues, vendors, and clients is a breeze. I can also share a file publicly with a couple of clicks, things like downloadable pdf reports.

I have folders for all my clients and each folder has files I share with them and I can specifically share some files with some people and other files with other people. We can collaborate on Word documents, spreadsheets and just like AOC, in calendars so everybody can see each other's availability.

I can even make public surveys or questionnaires after I collect all the responses then G Suite will give me a nice report of the data, with pie charts or graph bars to present the information easily, and it puts it into a spreadsheet also. It's pretty sweet.

I use G Suite to keep files for internal projects, I can store any kind of file and then it's available anywhere I have access to the internet, on my mobile device, on my tablet, on any of my laptops or even at a client's site if I need to. It's always backed up, always available and always easy to share.

Check it out, if you're interested in using it for your business, here's the link to it.

If you're really interested and are ready to sign up, I have a couple of discount codes. Google gives me a couple every few months. But they're single-use, so I can't post them. If you want one of the codes, leave a comment, make sure you fill out the email field, and I'll email you the code.

This discount code for G Suite gives you 20% off your first year of service.

The post Wait, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Uses G Cal? For Congress Business? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I had a chance to interview Heather Havenwood, author of the book Sexy Boss. Always staying ahead of the curve, Heather gave us some insights into an amazing technique to improve your digital marketing game.

This interview is all about Chatbots.

Even though I have played with chatbots quite a bit, I am not currently using them for my pages.

Also, Heather's book:Sexy Boss - How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rule Book for Money, Success and Even Sex, and How You Can Too!

I know I'm sharing this almost a year after I recorded it, but it is still relevant as the chatbot race hasn't been settled yet.

Affiliate Summit takes place throughout the year and all over the world so take a look at it if you want to learn more about Affiliate marketing and related fields.

As more companies join the chatbot world, how do you feel about it? I asked my friends about it on Facebook and they had mixed reactions to it. I'd love to hear how you feel about them.

The post Interview About Chatbots with Heather Havenwood aka Sexy Boss appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I haven't dug into why Twittercounter shut down but I'm guessing they weren't making enough money with their paid placements and other enhancements to their stats.

Their announcement was simple and straightforward but didn't offer much of an explanation:

Sorry to hear this. Your data was very helpful to my org over the years.

— Magnetic Dynamo (@magneticdynamo) November 2, 2018

Some people on Twitter felt left out because they were paying members and they weren't notified, but a quick email seems to have solved that.

Other people seemed to be sad that the service was going away. I totally missed the announcement until just recently when I started this blog post but I didn't get a chance to publish it.

To be honest, I'm going to miss the TwitterCounter system. They have been around for a long time and pretty much became part of the Twitter ecosystem.

Thanks for all the stats guys! Best of luck on your next venture.

So the TwitterCounter shutdown seems to be just like general business failure, it's already updated on Wikipedia and there's a footnote in there in reference to a hacking incident coming from Turkey I guess but it's unclear if that has anything to do with its decomision.

So as far as I can tell, no foul play for now.

But in other news...

No foul play there, unlike the Chipotle incident! Now, that's controversial right now, isn't it? There's a whole lot of people on both sides although I think it's going to unravel even more and totally lean towards one side.

What do you think? Do you think we've heard everything we have about that or we'll we hear about it again soon when more unravels for one reason or another?

Here's PhillyD's take on it, starting on the first story:

Here's Tim Pool's on the Chipotle incident, titled: Chipotle is LYING About The Racial Profiling Controversy:

Our world is going crazy, but you keep your eye on the prize. Focus on the good stuff around you, especially with Thanksgiving coming up just around the corner.

Be thankful for what you have and Happy Thanksgiving!

The post Twittercounter.com Closed Down on November 5 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I think this is particularly true today, especially with some of WordPress' latest "political" internal issues and conflicts like the Gutenberg debacle. But we're not going to get into that part right now although I have more to say on the matter.

But I want you to check out this and learn a little bit more about it on this link, and see how you could utilize this system to improve your current business.

Not just the next level but in the words of Grant Cardone, 10x your business. Whether you run a blog, a beauty salon, a software company, a plumbing service or you sell arts and crafts at your local flea market, this can help you increase your revenue.

Now, I get it, Grant Cardone isn't for everybody but his success is undeniable. You owe it to yourself to at least learn about the 10x secrets and the whole 10x funnel system it's by ClickFunnels so it's good.

I've been using ClickFunnels for 2 or 3 years and it works wonders on productivity and efficiency because its purpose is to drive revenue for your business.

With ClickFunnels, there is no need to update, patch, secure or maintain anything, no distracting plugins, widgets or stats.

ClickFunnels just works, whether you need to build one page to promote your latest product or service, or an entire website or campaign.

Yes I still love WordPress, but sometimes it is not the right tool. In the case where you already have WordPress, you should know that you can integrate the two very easily since ClickFunnels has a plugin for WordPress.

Check out the Driving with Oscar video below and give Clickfunnels a try. You can thank me later.

The post Better Than WordPress? That’s Blasphemous! appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I want to integrate Instagram into my blogging and monetization strategy, so I need to grow the numbers. That's just how social media works. Numbers and engagement rule the social media world. When I started this new experiment, 11 days ago, I had 890 followers. Today I just broke past 1300. THANK YOU, everyone, that has joined me so far!

That's approximately 36 new followers per day, so that's pretty good I think. I'm sure it could be better, but I don't have boobs, fancy supercars, and I don't travel to exotic destinations every other day. My Instagram account is about my experiences as an entrepreneur, blogger, and vlogger. I teach how to use WordPress, how to do affiliate marketing, how to monetize your blog and all the stuff that comes with it so I'll post about that from time to time.

I'm learning to post better photos, to use hashtags and to create more engagement through engagement with other accounts. I knew what to do, but doing it consistently and effectively is totally different.

I have some ideas of what I need to do, and I've seen how other people do what I'm trying to accomplish. I like some of the techniques that people suggest and I loathe some of the other methods that some people use. The worst technique of all is when a "big account" follows you and you get excited, you like their posts, leave some comments and then follow back, just for them to immediately unfollow you.

This is a shitty trick and I'm already sick of it and I'm only 11 days into my growth spurt. I guess it's part of the game, but it's still a total asshole move #sorrynotsorry. Yeah if you do that, I'm calling you out. You're not a celebrity, you don't have to keep your following number at 71 and doing so deliberately just makes you look like a douche, not to mention that you ruin the experience for other accounts trying to grow and trying to engage with you. And I'm not the only one that feels this way.

I follow people whose content I like regardless of the niche they're in because I have many interests. The only reason I unfollow you is if you post a ton of pictures back to back and clutter my feed, or if your posts turn out to be really low quality. This rarely happens because I spend time looking at the accounts before I decide to follow so I know that I will most likely be interested in future content.

With that said, I'm using a number of tools to help me achieve the goal of 5000 followers. At this pace, I might reach that goal in 4 - 5 months, but as with most social media, I think that once I build more momentum the numbers may accelerate. Or I might crash and burn, We'll see.

The Tools & Resources

Here's a quick list of the tools and resources I'm using. I will be doing a review of some of these on their own blog post.

FotoJet (link)- Image creation app to help with quotes, photo editing and stuff like that. I normally use Photoshop and I know it well, but sometimes it's overkill. Fotojet so far seems like a great alternative.

FollowCop (link)- App for Android, helps me find out who is doing that ass*hole move I mentioned above, and also tells me who are the most engaged followers, who is leaving me comments, liking my stuff, and all that stuff so that I can stay on top of it. Instagram only shows about 24 hours of activity history so it's easy to miss some interaction; this helps a lot so my followers and new followers don't feel neglected. Don't worry, I'll get back to you sooner than later!

SocialRunner (link) - A service that helps you find engaged users in your niche. I would recommend you check it out if you want to try what I'm doing. They have a 3-day trial, 1-month or 3-month plan. If you want to save 15%, use this coupon: OSCAR20. You fill out an extensive questionnaire, they'll get in touch with you and then they help you find users and help you grow the account. I like this because they don't follow others on my behalf; I want to do that myself. A full review of this coming in the next week or two.

Buffer  (link)- I use this to schedule posts in advance for Instagram. Also, I'm using the term "schedule" loosely because, with Instagram, you can't really schedule posts automatically like you can do for Twitter or Facebook; heck Facebook lets you schedule posts within their own service! For Instagram, Buffer takes the photos and your caption and then sends you a notification on your mobile device when it's time to post. Buffer adds the photo to Instagram and copies the caption to your clipboard so you can finish up the Instagram post before publishing.

InstaWealth Growth System by @Wolfmillionaire (link) - An extensive course to help you use an Instagram account to make money. Walks you through everything you need to accomplish this; I've just finished reviewing Chapter 1; it has 12 modules, and it's pretty good. I'll share my thoughts in a post within a couple days.

Notegraphy (link)- An app to help you create stylish quotes which you can then repost on Instagram. I'm not thrilled with this one but I've used it a couple times with various results. Android version linked, not sure if they have iOS.

Quoter (link) - Another app to help with quotes, this one comes with a database of quotes you can use. I've only used it to make my own, but unfortunately, I'm not thrilled with the results either. Android version linked, not sure if they have iOS.

Grow Your Blog FB Group (link) - A great group of bloggers that help each other with growth and engagement. Use sparingly and follow the rules, or you'll get banned.

And of course, I use the Instagram app a lot. I do most of my commenting, liking and following from the app on my phone or from the Instagram website on my desktop. I also have an IFTTT recipe that posts my Instagram photos to Twitter, but I'm thinking that's not the best strategy if I want to grow my IG account. The way I have that setup right now makes it so I post the actual photo to Twitter, so then people that see it on Twitter don't really need to go to Instagram to see it. This is a double-edged sword; on one hand, I'm giving the content to my Twitter followers exactly where they are, right then and now; on the other hand, they have no reason to follow through with the link to go to my Instagram account. I'll have to decide on that one.

Talk soon!

The post Instagram Growth Journey, Thoughts Tips & Resources. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I decided to completely clean up house and start from scratch. I started unfollowing people on Twitter one at a time, but that's a long tedious process, and it's very easy to get distracted.

Then I tried using tools like Rewst.com or Manageflitter.com but those don't really have a straight up mass unfollow tool. I love Rewst, don't get me wrong, but I needed a nuclear option for this task.

I had forgotten why I was following most people, so I had to clean up my account.

The solution

So here's the solution I found to work and might work for you if you are in the same boat.

Start off by creating a couple of lists where you will put people that you don't want to lose track of. I already had a number of lists so I just made sure the people I really want to follow were on one of the lists I had.

Then I found this Chrome extension called: Twitter unfollow. The extension works really well and it's easy to use.

Keep in mind that if you are following more than a few hundred people, the extension might stop working before it finishes unfollowing everybody. This happens because Twitter has limits in place to prevent people from trying to game the system by following thousands of accounts and then unfollowing them all right away.

How to use the extension

1. It's easy to install, just go to the link, install it and it will show up as an icon on your toolbar.Small inconspicuous icon denotes that you have installed the mass unfollow extension.
2. Go to your following page on Twitter, this is the link: https://twitter.com/following
3. On your following page, you'll notice a new button that says "mass unfollow." Click that button and sit back until it's finished.

   

If the extension stops working, wait a day and try again. There probably isn't anything wrong with it, the problem might be that you have reached one or more limits in your account.

For me, the Twitter unfollow extension stopped mass unfollowing at around 700 people. In 24 hours I'll run it again and keep doing this until I reach 0 following.

Enter the lists!

After you have unfollowed all the people, then that's where the lists I have in place are going to come in handy. I can then go to those lists and follow the people I want to follow again and the natural order of things is restored.

There are a couple of caveats when you mass unfollow everybody.

Expect a lot of people to unfollow you as well.

Some people will only follow you as a "follow-back" and they don't really care about what you have to say. That's okay, this will give you a more accurate number of the people that actually follow you and are paying attention. Think of it as a purge.

Twitter has limits

Twitter has limits in place when it comes to following and unfollowing people at high rates. You may need to do this process over a period of several days and wait 24 hours to run another batch of unfollows.

Keep in mind, when you finish mass unfollowing, you may not be able to unfollow people manually or even follow people again for 24 hours or longer. Twitter doesn't release all the details about their limits, but it's a combination of the actual amount of followers and following, as well as your account age and usage in your account.

So that's it, easy and straight forward method of unfollowing everybody, also known as mass unfollow. If you want to learn how to get more followers then check out this post.

The post How to Mass Unfollow on Twitter appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Keep in mind most of these tools are free or have a free version, but some are paid only or only have a free trial. I personally use every single tool listed here and in most cases, I have the paid version. I consider them essential to my business and as a professional blogger, I think of them as part of the cost of doing business.

If you want to become a professional blogger or want to take your blogging to the next level, then check out the list of tools, sign up for them and start using them, learn them, improve your workflow but I would also love your feedback and any tips about your favorite tools to use when blogging.

So without further ado, here's the list.

1. Self-Hosted WordPress

You can start a blog with various different tools, Medium, Blogger, Tumblr, but hands down, the best blogging platform when it comes to a balance of features, reliability, and customizability is a self-hosted WordPress blog. A blogger that is using one of the free services like blogger is usually considered a casual blogger or hobbyist. There's nothing wrong with these services, but they are limited and hard to customize when you need to grow and expand.

Some of the services I mentioned allow you to upgrade from the free version to a paid service which will give you more options, but ultimately they still restrict your ability to fully customize your readers' experience. If you want to be a serious blogger in 2017 and for the foreseeable future, start your blog on WordPress.org or move to a WordPress.org blog.

There are many companies that offer web hosting and will help you setup a self-hosted WordPress blog. You can find some of my recommended web hosts on this blog post about web hosting, and you can read more about self-hosted WordPress here.

2. Grammarly

Spell check is so 2005. As a blogger, you need Grammarly before you hit publish on your next blog post. Grammarly is the world's best proofreader according to them. It extends beyond the basic grammar and spell check and intelligently corrects your text so you can put your best work in front of your readers. It's easy to use and works with all major browsers, and did I mention that it's free?

Your readers will appreciate that you can write well. Just by using Grammarly and following the suggestions provided on-screen, you will start writing better posts which will make your writing more professional. Get started with Grammarly for free here.

3. Capitalize my title

This little online service helps you correctly capitalize your titles. It works no matter what style you want to follow, AP, APA, Chicago or MLA. Just visit the website, paste in your title and click the style you want to use and it will automatically take care of capitalizing the words properly. Completely free to use here: capitalizemytitle.com.

4. Canva

Graphics play an important role in every blog post. But you don't have to possess great Photoshop skills to create great graphics for your blog posts. Canva is a free online service that helps you make title graphics, infographics, and other graphical elements to make your blog posts stand out. Get a canva account for free right here.

5. Imageinject / WP-Inject*

This is a plugin made for WordPress (self-hosted) bloggers. It helps to find images that are licensed under the Creative Commons license and are free to use in a blog post. It also takes care of inserting the relevant attribution information.The plugin is available for

I recommend it to almost all new and established bloggers. Using images in your blog posts helps improve reader engagement, shareability, SEO and ultimately makes your blog posts more complete.

The plugin is available for free in the official WordPress repository.

6. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the gold standard for measuring the number of visitors your blog receives and learning more about the audience of your blog. It should be one of the first things that you install on your blog and you should spend time learning how to use it and how to use its information to help you improve your blog.

You can install Google Analytics on your WordPress blog easily by using a plugin like Monster Insights. You'll need a Google or Gmail account, and you can sign up for free for a Google Analytics account here.

7. Social Media Accounts

Every blogger should have at least a basic presence on all the major social networks. Having an account on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube helps reach a wider audience and facilitates the engagement with the audience for the blog where they like to hang out. Sign up for each network and develop a profile. Learn to search each platform and understand how your audience is using each of the networks so that you can participate in relevant conversations when necessary without having to start from scratch.

8. Buffer

Buffer is a social media share service that helps bloggers distribute their content across many of the major social networks. The basic plans are free, and the paid version provides access to some really powerful features like the power editor and access to share in more than five networks in one action. I find it

Buffer works the best in a browser, but it's also available for iOS and Android, just go to their main website here to get started.

9. Plagium

This is particularly useful when you have multiple authors contributing stories and blog posts to your blog. The main purpose is to check if the blog post as been published somewhere else before and helps you avoid plagiarism. Nobody likes a content thief so this will save you hours of headaches and prevent many problems and even legal hassles. Of course, the best thing is to find writers and contributors that don't steal other people's content but just in case, you can use

Of course, the best thing is to find writers and contributors that don't steal other people's content but just in case, you can use Plagium for free by visiting the website here.

10. Evernote

Evernote is the swiss army knife of research and note keeping. It's a very powerful tool that helps you gather your thoughts when you're researching a topic. The browser plugin helps you make connections to stuff you might have researched before.

If you use it in conjunction with Skitch, then you can also save screenshots and photos and recall them with OCR (optical character recognition) which means that you just have to type in a word that appears in the screenshot or picture to bring up the note, even if you saved it months or weeks ago. The free version is very powerful, but the paid version is very inexpensive, you can start using Evernote by visiting their site here.

11. Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you easily save files and documents so that they're available from any of your devices almost instantly. You can also use it to share access to a file or document with other bloggers or contributors.

Dropbox, like Evernote, is free for a limited edition of their service, but you can sign up and invite others to use it to get more free space. If you want to sign up and receive an additional 500mb of free space, then sign up for Dropbox here using my link.

12. Aweber

Aweber is an autoresponder email system that helps you send your blog posts out to your subscribers on a regular basis. It is a powerful tool that should really be at the very top of this list. The only reason I didn't put it up there is because it only has a free month trial and after that, you'll need to pay for the service.

I use it and I highly recommend it, you can use it to build your email list and send your blog posts manually or set it to automatically send the blog post automatically after you publish it. You can also create a newsletter or digest to stay in touch with your readers. Get started with a free 30 day trial with Aweber here.

13. Optinmonster

I have blogged about Optinmonster in the past, so maybe you already use it because of my suggestion. It's one of my favorite tools and I make it a requirement for any of my students or clients. That's how much I like it and believe in its capabilities. If you're trying to grow your audience and exposure on your blog, you must use Optinmonster.

It's not free and it's not cheap, but it can really take your email subscriptions to the next level. Another good thing about Optinmonster is that even if you refuse to use a WordPress self-hosted blog, you can still use Optinmonster. It is also under heavy development and constantly adds new features that benefits all bloggers, like custom code, analytics, content lockers, conditional triggering and much more. If you're ready to elevate your blog, then

It is under heavy development and the team constantly adds new features that benefits all bloggers, like custom code, analytics, content lockers, conditional triggering and much more. If you're ready to elevate your blog, then check out Optinmonster here.

Wrapping Up

As I reviewed this post, I realized I am missing a number of apps and services that I use on a daily basis, but I also understand that your time is valuable and if you're new to blogging this list should keep you busy for a while so I'm going to stop at 13. I would love to hear your thoughts on this list, and I want to know if you interested in learning about the other tools. Let me know in the comments or on social media.

The post Must Have Tools for Bloggers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It may not be full of fancy features but it did the trick of converting a PDF file into a Word document for me. So it was worth every penny that I didn't pay. I highly recommend adding this to your favorites for future reference.

So you go to their site, you browse to your local system to find the file you want to convert. You then select the type of file you want it converted to and specify an e-mail address that will receive the link to download the newly converted file. Pretty nifty if you ask me. Check it out!

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

5 min later edit...

Wow, it even does media files. Granted there is a 100 mb limit but if you don't need more than that then this is great for that too.

The post Free File Conversion Website. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.